Act’s dishonest Youth offending policy
Act’s newly released policy that suggests all 17 year olds are dealt with in the Youth Court shows a concerning lack of understand how the Youth Justice system actually works.
Social issues
crime
The very strange election campaign
With 98 days to go despite large parts of the electorate being very grumpy the polls are neck and neck and Labour can still win. This is what they have to do.
NACT’s Law & Order Policies: Dog Whistle Or Proto-Fascism?
NACT’s Law & Order policies are a dog whistle and signs of proto-fascism.
There is no misogyny in New Zealand *
* sung to the famous tune from Blam Blam Blam.
Three strikes law is not the answer
National is proposing a return of the Three Strikes legislation, despite the Supreme Court ruling that the law went well beyond excessive punishment and would shock the conscience of properly informed New Zealanders, and was so disproportionately severe as to breach the Bill of Rights. And despite there being no evidence that it would actually work.
Overblown rhetoric and Laura Norder
This week has seen some extreme rhetoric from various quarters about who to blame for a recent senseless killing. But news that the person arrested had recently been extradited from Australia has shown the rhetoric to be entirely misplaced.
National’s Boot Camps announcement is deeply cynical policy recycling
There should be a law against the cynical recycling of dog whistle policies that everyone knows will not work. Last week’s announcement by National of a boot camp policy is as good an example as you can imagine.
Newshub’s incredibly bad gang take
Yesterday the Government announced a slate of new powers designed to address gang violence. Newshub chose that day to imply that Labour was soft on gangs because a gang member said on social media not to vote for National.
Mark Mitchell is Kim Hilled on National Radio
National should learn. They should never send an MP into an interview with Kim Hill unless they are completely prepared. As Mark Mitchell learned this morning.
National needs better lawyers
Christopher Luxon this morning called for the police getting warrantless search powers for arms. But the law already allows for warrantless searches where Arms Act violations are suspected.
Why haven’t the police acted?
It is day 10 of the Anti vax protest on Parliament’s grounds. More cars are being parked illegally and despite considerable disruption to Wellington’s roading network so far not one car has been towed by the police.
Terrorist attack – Law changes may not have helped deal
A proposed urgent change in the law concerning preparing to commit a terrorist attack may not have stopped the New Lynn attack from happening.
Can The Terror-Injured Citizens Hold the New Zealand Government To Account?
While Prime Minister Ardern is an empathic Prime Minister, good for the country in a crisis, and is genuinely caring, there’s also a time for citizens to say that the state must pay to right wrongs.
The politics of the New Lynn attack
Early days so far but the New Lynn attack will spark a debate about the adequacy of the country’s terrorism suppression laws and about citizenship rights.
Terrorist attack in New Lynn
News broke this afternoon of an attack at Countdown Lynnmall where the assailant was shot and six people injured, three critically. Jacinda Ardern and Police Commissioner have just given a stand up conference and have advised that the assailant was ISIS inspired.
Lies damned lies and Crime statistics
It should be an offence for political parties to deliberately misrepresent law and order statistics as National has done this week. It should be an aggravating feature if the party is a conservative party that champions law and order issues. After all fraud is an offence and if we don’t punish it appropriately then everyone will do it.
Rare misstep
Simeon Brown in his attack on the Government for allegedly funding the Mongrel Mob has shown a disturbing ability to understand how Government works and an even more disturbing inability to perform basic maths.
Government to issue an apology for the dawn raids
The Government has announced it will publicly apologise for the treatment of Pacific people in the 1970s when they were harassed and discriminated against by the Police because of the place of their birth and the colour of their skin.
C’mon National!
Forlorn for now though they may be, this is the advice National MPs need right now.
Israel commits war crime in Gaza
The state of Israel has committed a war crime by deliberately targeting and blowing up a Gaza tower that housed civilian residents and the Aljazeera Middle East office.
The biggest grifter
The New York Times is reporting that the Trump Campaign sucked in a whole lot of republican voters by asking for urgent donations but then treating them as regular rather than one off donations unless donors discovered and clicked on a well hidden check box.
Who’s the wokester?
Simon Bridges has repeated claims that Police Commissioner Andy Coster is “wokester” and has underlined how weak National’s caucus discipline is.
Prison conditions
Statements by the Minister for Corrections and Corrections themselves asserting that there had been no complaints about prison conditions at Waikeria, in the face of the Ombudsman’s report, just look to me to be pure sophistry and bullshit. The report on conditions in the high security make grim reading. Even ignoring the inmates protest – I want to protest about the waste of my taxes in providing such a unproductive, inhumane and outright evil environment.
Waikeria Prison
The stand off at Waikeria Prison between inmates and Corrections staff has attracted two responses from opposition parties, one being constructive and helpful and the other being complete and utter grandstanding.
Trump pardons buddies
Donald trump has in the past couple of days issued a number of pardons to people including former members of his campaign team, Jared Kushner’s father, a group of contractors involved in the massacre of 14 Iraqi civilians including a 14 year old boy and Ben Carson’s best friend.
No Right Turn: If police think this is lawful and ethical, why did they try to hide it?
“The Privacy Commisisoner has said explicitly that any use of facial recognition needs a high level of scrutiny, which for a government agency, effectively means their approval. Police deliberately avoided doing that.”
National’s week from hell
A review of National’s week which is as bad as any week I can remember.
West Auckland Shooting
Two police officers have been shot in West Auckland. Is it time to arm the Police?
Strike Force Raptor is no more
National has backed away from its policy of creating Strike Force Raptor Police Unit, a unit based on an Australian force dedicated to terrorising possible gang members.
Black lives matter Aotearoa version
The Black Lives Matter movement is causing many countries to reflect on their history and practices. And the decision of the police to discontinue the Armed Response Teams Trial and the Childrens Commissioner’s scathing report on Oranga Tamariki’s practices in the uplifting of young children, mostly Maori, from their mothers are examples of the change that is happening.
NZ Police abandon Armed Response Teams
We have a model of policing by consent and that means we need the vast majority of people to see as legitimate the style in which we’re policing and it’s been clear to me that there has not been acceptance of this as an appropriate style of policing in New Zealand. – Police Commissioner Andrew Coster
Black lives matter
The civil war may have ended slavery, the civil rights movement may have changed the legal framework ending segregation in the Southern States, but the idea that white people’s lives matter more has survived into the 21st century.
What the Greens did
A round up of the Green Party’s achievements in the 2020 Budget: funding for nature, the commitment to ending violence, and public housing and insulation. And a look at the pragmatics of what the Greens can currently accomplish.
Viruses love liberty – they can breed more.
Viruses and other diseases simply don’t care about abstractions like ‘human rights’. They just want to breed. We need a better legislative toolkit to deal with epidemics. There is only so long that a draconian state of emergency should be maintained. Like 1918 we need to start thinking about the future Health Act with reserve powers like level 2 and 1. In the meantime, we’ll deal with the virus with this imperfect act as a tool.
Go Joe.
The clock is ticking on Joe Biden.
Phasing into phase 4
Heading into phase three, moving into phase four 48 hours later. Here is the video briefing and the quick analysis.